


Platonic

by Halfblood_Fiend



Series: Star Trek 2020 Filled Bingos [8]
Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Bad Flirting, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-02
Updated: 2020-09-02
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:55:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26243755
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Halfblood_Fiend/pseuds/Halfblood_Fiend
Summary: Giana and Vorik meet up for another lesson in Kal-Toh, only this time, Vorik gets wise to her game and she wants to throw herself off a cliff.
Series: Star Trek 2020 Filled Bingos [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1904971
Kudos: 11
Collections: Star Trek Bingo Summer 2020





	Platonic

**Author's Note:**

> For the Star Trek Bingo 2020:  
> Horizontal Prompt 3
> 
> Teachers/Mentors

“We’re still on for tonight to play Vulcan Pick Up Sticks, right?” I asked Vorik as we both left Engineering together a few minutes after the shift change whistle blew. It was the end of my shift, and the end of Vorik assisting B’Elanna even though she never asked him to. _His_ shift had ended hours ago, and he insisted that he stay anyway to see through the retrofit he had been tweaking for weeks. The Lieutenant humored him longer than I thought she would, but eventually, she pulled rank and threw him out. I had a little bet with Crewman Jor that she would do it more literally. I suppose I was glad, for Vorik’s sake, that I’d lost.

In response to my question (and the little grin tugging at my mouth) Vorik did the Vulcan equivalent of an eye roll. He hazarded me a Look™ and a slow blink that said everything he was thinking. _I know you are purposefully but illogically attempting to illicit a reaction from me, which I am going to ignore._

Or whatever.

Instead of telling me off, he replied, “I can only assume you mean to ask me if we shall be resuming your lessons in Kal-toh? To which my response is, ‘yes.’ I had agreed to this activity some time ago.”

“Cool,” I laughed. “I think I’m getting close to being good at it”

As we got into the turbolift together, Vorik shook his head at me. “I don’t know _where_ you’ve drawn that conclusion from, as _I_ certainly have never encouraged it.”

Maybe he didn’t, but he also never told me to get lost, so I figured that had to count for something.

“I’m going to beat you this time.”

“I highly doubt that.”

My answer was to stick my tongue out at him when he wasn’t looking.

* * *

Nothing but the steady hum of the warp engines and the low whir of the air recycling system broke the contemplative silence of Vorik’s quarters in the early evening. At the moment, even though I was certain I was somehow losing horribly, this was my favorite place to be. My only complaint could be the lack of conversation, but my Vulcan friend had shushed me too many times during his turns for me to keep trying. Even so, the quiet was companionable and made me feel a contentedness I only found on Voyager when we were like this.

Just him. Just me. And maybe a game between us as a guise to spend more time with him.

Ah, so satisfying that my evil plot to make a friend was coming to fruition.

It was my turn to pull needle-like _t’an_ from the silver, vaguely spherical object in front of me, and I was pretending to take my time thinking. As though I had any chance of pulling a win out of the mess of spindles before me.

I reached out my hand and watched Vorik’s calm face for any sign of what might be going through his head. When he glanced up at me, I flashed him a dumb smile to cover the flutter of my heart before I turned my attention back to the board.

I willed the half-built, half chaotic array of spiky needles to illuminate what my next move should be in order to keep this game going longer. They stubbornly remained silent as far as that was concerned, but the board did seem to beg to be put on display in a modern art exhibit.

_New Exhibit Coming to The Getty In The Fall of 2373: Half Finished Kal-Toh Games by Artist Giana Moreno._

_Said to represent the dichotomy of Logic and Chaos as commonly found in Human-Vulcan relationships._

I blinked and the game came back into focus.

_Taking—long—_

“Hmm? Didjya say something?”

Vorik’s brow furrowed for a moment. “No,” was his curt reply.

“Oh.”

I shook my head slightly. I wasn’t going to argue with him. I’d imagined crazier things before, and I knew I’d let my mind wander on a little tangent, but I could have sworn I’d heard his voice…

A strange feeling like a cobweb tickling my skin settled in the back of my mind. _Weird._

Vorik brought me back with a soft sigh through his nose. “You remember what I instructed about seeking out strategic _t’an?_ ”

“Yeah, yeah…” I said, waving him away.

“And my advice to imagine them already in their places?”

“Yes, Vorik.”

He looked unconvinced but didn’t say anything else.

I smiled. “I’m actually sorta at war with myself over this next move.”

“How so?”

“Do I pick the _t’an_ that I know you would recommend I pick? Or do I pick what my gut is telling me to pick?”

“Ah. _That_ little Human proclivity.” Vorik rolled his eyes. Slightly.

“Don’t even _act_ like Human intuition hasn’t saved our butts on multiple occasions,” I shot back with a grin.

“Correlation, only,” he scoffed. “At any rate, I do not see why your internal organs should have any say in your next move. Surely you aren’t insinuating that they possess more knowledge about _Kal-Toh_ than I do.”

“Oh, no, I’d never!” My fingers trailed over a _t’an_ in the center of the board that looked like a good one to introduce _more_ chaos into the game. “But a thought occurred to me earlier that I can’t get out of my head…”

“And that is?”

My heart sped up a little, though I didn’t know completely why. I smiled and glanced up at Vorik through my eyelashes. “How do I _really_ know that you’re teaching me how to play to win? You could just be teaching me how to _lose_ so that _you_ always win.”

It occurred to me why my pulse was hammering. My dumb ass was fucking _flirting_. Or trying to, in my not-very-good-at-it way. My only comfort was that I was usually too dang clumsy for Vorik to ever notice, thick-headed boy that he was. I knew it was pointless, but the heart wants what it wants and sometimes I stopped pretending like I didn’t want more.

More quiet moments in our quarters. More shared meals alone together. More, just… _more._

Vorik looked away and busied himself with stacking our long-ago-abandoned meal trays and moved them further away from our game area. Then he replied, somewhat wearily, “What would I gain from that? I agreed to teach you how to play _Kal-Toh_ , spent many hours doing so, and still you cannot be bothered to even be _passable_.”

The smile wiped from my face immediately. I tapped the _t’an_ with nervous fingers. My companion’s tone had changed and changed the whole energy of the room with it. Alarm bells started going off in my head. I did my best to ignore them, willed myself to wait for Vorik to explain before I let my anxiety consume me, but it was taking everything I had.

_I_ knew I had been joking, but Vorik’s minute frown told me that pointing this fact out now might make him more irate. Even if he would never admit to such an emotion.

“What do you mean?” I asked as calmly as I could manage with the cold panic that I had done something terribly wrong welling up in my throat.

Vorik’s gaze went to my fingers among the extending _t’an._ They were trembling. Seeing this, I dropped my hand to the table and curled it into a fist.

For probably the _billionth_ time I wished I wasn’t so goddamn easy for him to read. I had the good sense to be embarrassed.

When he looked up at me again, his dark eyes seemed to be gentler. He took a deep quiet breath and spoke as if each word he was choosing was deliberate. “It appears to me that despite my efforts, you repeatedly make similar mistakes during each round of play. At times, it even appears as though you are purposefully making strategically incorrect moves, further delaying a victory for either of us. I spend most of my turn undoing what you had previously done. Is my method of teaching unsatisfactory to you?”

“No,” I mumbled. Dread squeezed its way in-between all the panic.

_He was on to me…_

“Am I explaining things in a way you do not understand?”

He was _still_ trying to help me and—boy, oh, boy—I loved him for that, but his words made my chest painfully tight. How could I admit to him that I _was_ actually doing _exactly_ what he thought I was and that I spent most of this time goofing off because I really _didn’t care_ if I was _ever_ any good at _Kal-Toh._ Getting good was never really my objective in asking him to teach me. It was just that our tutoring sessions both in and out of Engineering had stopped being so necessary and I had wanted to keep hanging out with him.

I used excuses I…probably didn’t even need, now that I thought about it… But I was scared that if he was no longer ordered to hang out with me, that…maybe he wouldn’t want to.

Now I felt deflated. Foolish, and stung, like a toddler who just got reprimanded.

“No,” I sighed. “Your instruction is concise and clear. Quite well-ordered and clearly from a knowledgeable place.”

Vorik frowned at my Vulcan-esque compliments instead of thanking me for them like he usually did. He pressed, “Then _why—_ How has there been no improvement in the proficiency of your play? We have played four rounds tonight. You have lost all of them. Then you accuse me of cheating—”

“It wasn’t, like, a _real_ accusation—”

“—and choose to play, not by rules or strategy, but by your “gut”?” He shook his head. “I do not understand you, Giana. I have been considering your possible motives for weeks but now it appears prudent to simply ask you: _What is the logic in this?”_

I raised my eyes from the table and found him exasperated, but clearly curious. Vorik’s head was cocked slightly to the side. He observed me in that calculating Vulcan way that made every fiber of my being want to squirm.

_Because I’m too stupid and too shy to just_ ask _you to spend more time with me?_

_Because I love you and I like watching you focus on things that you’re good at?_

_Because—_

_Because…_

Instead, I said, “You’re right. There’s not any logic. I’m just…messing around. Here.” I shifted my hand and instead of pulling the _t’an_ from the center, I pulled one from the mess of spindles closest to me.

The whole sphere trembled and waivered sending small vibrations through the table and all the remaining _t’an_ realigned themselves into the correct shape as though I had just unlocked a particularly stubborn door with a very specific key. Then I placed my _t’an_ on a strut near the top and the sphere trembled again. It hovered for a moment as a hollowed geometric sphere, before it wavered and shimmered into a shining smooth outer shell that indicated the game was over.

I’d won.

I held out my hand in a “ta-da” gesture and leaned back in my chair.

Vorik’s eyes narrowed infinitesimally as he looked back and forth between the gameboard and me. I pretended to be more interested in a freckle on my arm.

“Then you _do_ know how to play…” he said eventually.

Shrugging, I replied, “I’ve got a good teacher.” I looked anywhere but him. “I always have.”

A lump stuck in my throat. My heart panged painfully. Sure wished it wouldn’t.

I did have a good teacher. And maybe a good friend. But I was fooling myself. There was nothing more.

Vorik was quiet for a long while and I let him sit and stew and think whatever he needed to. There wasn’t anything I wanted to say to him. I didn’t want to encourage more questions. Let him believe that I just wasn’t taking any of this seriously. Let him decide that was that.

_Please don’t let him figure out that I was learning how to play for really selfish reasons._

“Giana…”

Our eyes met and my stomach lurched as if the ground fell out from beneath me. My heart started going so fast I felt like I would pass out.

“That was…a good play,” he said softly.

“Learned from the best.” My voice accidentally came out as a whisper.

But he heard it. “Hardly,” he replied. “I will readily admit that my skill is amateur.”

“You impress me?” I offered, leaning forward without meaning to.

Vorik’s gaze was piercing. Intense. I had the feeling he was seeing through me again, but a different kind of flush was creeping up my chest and made me feel hot. Not embarrassment this time, but…

“You…impress me as well.”

The air between us felt almost electric. My heart swelled almost to bursting. I felt rather like I was so overwhelmed I might just do something stupid.

“I love you,” I blurted, long before I could stop myself.

Vorik’s eyebrows twitched.

The room got cold. All the air left lungs and I wished that I _could_ just faint and save myself from the icy terror that crawled under my skin. I blushed like I’d never blushed before and yet somehow, I still felt clammy all over.

_Oh God. No!_

My mind raced about a thousand times a second, scrambling for a way to cover my dumb ass. “Y-you’re the best friend that I’ve got on board this ship. So… you’re super important to me. I-I-I just… I-I didn’t want to make you upset with me. Over this. I-It’s just a game. Really.”

_Friends can tell friends that they love them, right? No big deal!_

Slowly, so slowly that it made me crazy with nerves, Vorik nodded. “I did not mean to imply that I was upset with you. But I…” He paused and folded his hands in front of him on the table as he considered his next words. “You must know that Vulcans do not have—we do not engage—”

I laughed quietly. Awkward, a touch forced, but also a little relieved. _He bought the cover._ “Vulcans don’t have friends, I know. But I hope that if you did, you’d count me as one?”

He started to speak—maybe to remind me that speculating was useless—but closed his mouth. He gave me a brief nod instead.

And that was good enough for me.

My next smile was more genuine. Real relief flooded my body and made me sag against the tabletop. That was _way_ too close. But at least I had a friend?

“I’ll get out of your hair now, if you want.”

Vorik regarded the _Kal-toh_ board for a moment and shook his head.

“There are still several hours before I will require meditation. We should play again. This time I will not ‘go easy on you’.”

“Hey, not fair. I only _just_ beat you! Can’t I enjoy my first win for a bit longer?”

He fixed me with an innocent stare and said, “That would be unacceptable.”

“You’re so rude!”

“ _You_ chose to designate me as your “best friend,” now this is the consequence.”

Chuckling at him, I kicked his boot under the table. His quirked eyebrow made me outright giggle.

“I can _guarantee_ you will lose in a contest to me if you choose physical violence. I do you the service of giving you a chance with _kal-toh.”_

“Ooooh, I’m so _grateful_.”

And I kicked him again, for good measure.

**Author's Note:**

> Can you tell this was supposed to be my "Chess/'Board' Game fill at first?? xD


End file.
